What she said

I was reading Heidi's post on Breaking the "Girl" Rule this morning. I think she's right in that many women (particularly those of us above a certain age) were brought up to be nice. For some of us it's easy, for others it's not, but there's a high value placed on getting along and being supportive of others that seems to be typical of a lot of women I know. It isn't necessarily a "women's thing"--it's also common courtesy, as covered in etiquette books dating back until, well, as long as there have been etiquette books--but society is less forgiving of women who aren't "nice," so it's understandable that women may have had it reinforced more than men.

Me, I grew up in the 60s and 70s. By the time I was a teenager I had recognized a real dichotomy in which behaviors were valued or expected. On the one hand, being kind and polite and treating others well was important, had always been important, and I knew that I was a lot happier when people were kind and polite to me. On the other, this was also the time when folks started to put a premium on honesty--telling others how they really felt about things was also considered a virtue. That, too, seemed fairly self-evident. Obviously, these two ideals often clashed. The nice people felt that the truth-tellers were being unnecessarily tactless and cruel, and the truth-tellers felt that the nice people were being dishonest and sneaky. Sure, there's a happy medium, but not everyone finds it in the same place.

Combine that with the last fifteen or twenty years of bare-it-all talk shows and reality television, and it's no wonder that there are people out there with no conception of social boundaries, not to mention appropriate behavior.

So...how is this comic-related?

Well, comic fans are a fringe group. I tend to be a fringe-y person, so I'm comfortable being a comic fan. I figured out long ago that hanging out with the non-fringe kids meant doing a lot of things that interested me not at all, so I didn't do it--they were nice enough, but we didn't have enough in common to sustain a real friendship. I never kept my love of comics a secret. I read them in study hall. On a trip, I insisted on going to a real comic store, dragging my somewhat bemused companions with me. And I can honestly say that no one ever said anything negative to me about it. Maybe teenagers, even mainstream teenagers, tend to be more accepting of fringe elements. Maybe I just went to high school with a bunch of pretty nice kids. I don't know.

And as an adult, I haven't had the sort of experiences with clueless rude people that Heidi is talking about. I hope I never do. And I hope that, if I do, I'll be able to overcome the shock, pull myself together, and call them on their rudeness. Probably something like "Gosh, that's kind of rude." Because I'm witty that way. :)

And because, damn it, comic fans are no more childish than football fans. And comic books are no more wasteful than People magazine.